NDP dig into anti-pipeline sentiment

The NDP have plunged even deeper into the oil sands debate by launching an anti-pipeline website late last week.

The site, radicals4ourcoast.ca, aims to rally opposition to Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline, a project aimed at linking the Albertan oilsands to Asian markets.

While NDP leader Thomas Mulcair has criticized the economic impacts of the oilsands on Canada’s manufacturing sector in the past, this is the most vocal the federal NDP have been about the controversial pipeline project.

However, during a study on the state of Canada’s pipelines and refineries by the House of Commons Natural Resources committee earlier this year, the party’s resources critic, Claude Gravelle, often spoke out against exporting raw fossil fuels through pipelines at the expense of refining jobs.

NDP House Leader Nathan Cullen, whose riding the pipeline will cross, and NDP environment critic Megan Leslie announced their opposition to the pipeline in a press release Friday after attending joint review panel (JRP) hearings for the project in Kitimaat Village, B.C.

“Witnessing the JRP hearings in Kitimaat Village and hearing people speak so passionately about their fears of the destruction of our land and sea if this pipeline is allowed to proceed was very powerful for Megan and our team,” Cullen is quoted as saying in the release.

The website allows users to create black and grey stickmen-like avatars and place them against a landscape that includes mountains and an oil tanker in the background.

Users can also select their own personal environmental practices such as recycling, eating organic food and bicycling. Those practices are then displayed as what makes the users’ “radicals.”

The site is ripping off comments made by Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver and other government politicians who said environmentalists who oppose energy development are radicals.

Enbridge wrote a blog post on its Northern Gateway website disputing Mulcair’s criticism of the oilsands on June 20.